(Susan Rice ended her term by appearing before the cameras at U.N. Headquarters on June 25 and reciting a list of Team Obama’s purported achievements. Among other things, Rice claimed that she had saved American taxpayer dollars going to the U.N. and had created new “transparency.”)

Comment: Kahane Chai. He was right. Oslo’s accord has been dead, dug up… shot… buried again, dug up, hanged then buried again… then dug up and certified. Push the Muslims out. This is not just a religious argument. This is a survival argument. No Jew can take an Israeli government seriously about safety of their family that does nothing now

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations voted overwhelmingly Thursday to recognize a Palestinian state, a long-sought victory for the Palestinians and an embarrassing diplomatic defeat for the United States.The resolution upgrading the Palestinians’ status to a nonmember observer state at the U.N. was approved by a vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions, in the 193-member world body.A Palestinian flag was quickly unfurled on the floor of the General Assembly, behind the Palestinian delegation. In the West Bank city of Ramallah, hundreds crowded into the main square waved Palestinian flags and chanted “God is great.” Others who had watched the vote on outdoor screens and television sets hugged, honked and set off fireworks before dancing in the streets.Real independence, however, remains an elusive dream until the Palestinians negotiate a peace deal with the Israelis, who warned that the General Assembly action will only delay a lasting solution. Israel still controls the West Bank, east Jerusalem and access to Gaza, and it accused the Palestinians of bypassing negotiations with the campaign to upgrade their U.N. status.The United States immediately criticized the historic vote. “Today’s unfortunate and counterproductive resolution places further obstacles in the path peace,” U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the vote “unfortunate” and “counterproductive.”

it’s a bit more extreme then that, but take what you can get with those two

The United States and Israel voted against recognition, joined by Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the General Assembly shortly before the vote “defamatory and venomous,” saying it was “full of mendacious propaganda” against Israel. Netanyahu called the vote meaningless.Abbas had told the General Assembly that it was “being asked today to issue the birth certificate of Palestine.” Abbas said the vote is the last chance to save the two-state solution.After the vote, Netanyahu said the U.N. move violated past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians and that Israel would act accordingly, without elaborating what steps it might take.Thursday’s vote came on the same day, Nov. 29, that the U.N. General Assembly in 1947 voted to recognize a state in Palestine, with the jubilant revelers then Jews. The Palestinians rejected that partition plan, and decades of tension and violence have followed.Just before Thursday’s vote, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Ron Prosor, warned the General Assembly that “the Palestinians are turning their backs on peace” and that the U.N. can’t break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.The vote had been certain to succeed, with most member states sympathetic to the Palestinians. Several key countries, including France, this week announced they would support the move to elevate the Palestinians from the status of U.N. observer to nonmember observer state.Unlike the more powerful U.N. Security Council, there are no vetoes in the General Assembly, and the resolution to raise the Palestinian status only required a majority vote for approval.The vote grants Abbas an overwhelming international endorsement for his key position: establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. With Netanyahu opposed to a pullback to the 1967 lines, this should strengthen Abbas’ hand if peace talks resume.The overwhelming vote also could help Abbas restore some of his standing, which has been eroded by years of standstill in peace efforts. His rival, Hamas, deeply entrenched in Gaza, has seen its popularity rise after an Israeli offensive on targets linked to the Islamic militant group there earlier this month.Israel has stepped back from initial threats of harsh retaliation for the Palestinians seeking U.N. recognition, but government officials warned that Israel would respond to any Palestinian attempts to use the upgraded status to confront Israel in international bodies.The Palestinians now can gain access to U.N. agencies and international bodies, most significantly the International Criminal Court, which could become a springboard for going after Israel for alleged war crimes or its ongoing settlement building on war-won land.However, in the run-up to the U.N. vote, Abbas signaled that he wants recognition to give him leverage in future talks with Israel, and not as a tool for confronting or delegitimizing Israel, as Israeli leaders have alleged.

Today Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte met with United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice about her role in presenting false information about what took place in Benghazi to the people of America. While she had gone on several Sunday talk show to promote the lie that the attacks were not planned and were spontaneous protests that got out of hand because of a YouTube video, she declared that her statements were not true, which has led to an entire line of questioning as to why she had talking points that were known lies.Each of the Senators had stunned responses:

“I’m more troubled today…because it is certainly clear from the beginning that we knew those with ties to al Qaeda were involved in the attack on the embassy.” -Senator Kelly Ayotte“It is clear the information she gave the American people was incorrect.” -Senator John McCain“Bottom line is, I’m more disturbed now than I was before.” -Senator Lindsey Graham

Clearly there were issues and it seems that each of the Senators have not changed their opinions of Ms. Rice being nominated as Secretary of State. It seems Graham was also one that didn’t really give an answer for why he threw the intelligence agencies under the bus during the press conference after being “more disturbed than he was before.” Personally, I’m disturbed at Graham here. Clearly the State Department was warned and they chose to ignore the threat. Republicans are going to have to get some spine and start pressing this matter more intensely or we will never get to the bottom of it.Watch the press conference below:

Immediately after the murder of Chris Stevens, America’s Ambassador to Libya, I suggested that the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11 could have profound consequences for President Barack Obama, particulary if he failed to take appropriate action against the murderers – the most likely candidates being members of al-Qaeda’s new terror franchise in Mali.But with the US presidential contest entering its critical final phase, the Obama administration deftly avoided getting into any controversy over the murder of Mr Stevens and three other members of the consulate staff by leading everyone to believe the murders were not part of an al-Qaeda plot, but the result of an outbreak of violence caused by a blaphemous film clip. This was certainly the line advanced by Dr Susan Rice, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and a close confidante of Mr Obama.Dr Rice, in common with other senior officials in the Obama administration, insisted that the assault on the US consulate had been “spontaneous”, rather than a carefully planned attack by terrorists. By making this claim, the White House effectively silenced any criticism that the Obama administration was culpable for not taking more effective measures to protect the consulate.But now it appears that Rice’s version of events – endorsed by the White House – was wrong. Within 24 hours of the attack taking place, Washington was informed by a variety of intelligence sources that the attack had indeed been pre-planned and was undoubtedly the work of al-Qaeda which, apart from attacking the consulate, had also attacked the CIA’s safe house in Benghazi.As a result, rather than absolving itself of any blame for this tragic incident, the White House – and Mr Obama – now find themselves at the centre of a mounting storm over what precisely they knew about the attack on the consulate, and when.Now that Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has confirmed there was an explicit link between al-Qaeda and the attack, questions are being asked about the role Dr Rice played in trying to play down the significance of the attack. The Republicans have already called for her to resign from her post for misleading the American people.But the real smoking gun is whether the Obama administration was warned in advance that al-Qaeda was planning an attack. A number of Israeli newspapers have suggested that Washington was warned as early as September 4 – a week earlier – that the environment in Benghazi was becoming increasingly hostile and anti-American, while in London the Foreign Office took the decision to withdraw all its consular staff from Benghazi two months before the murders. This decision was based on an intelligence assessment made by MI6 that al-Qaeda was openly operating in the area following a failed assassination attempt on Sir Dominic Asquith, Britain’s ambassador to Libya, in June.It is well known that British intelligence works closely with its counterpart in America, and if MI6 knew al-Qaeda was operating in the Benghazi region, then it is highly likely that the CIA did too.Suddenly the Administration’s “it’s nothing to do with us, guv,” defence is starting to look rather thin, with potentially disastrous consequences for Mr Obama’s re-election prospects.

Jihadists twice set off explosives at the consulate prior to the incident that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, and announced threats on Facebook about escalating attacks on Western targets in the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, according to whistleblowers reaching out to House Republicans.In the five months leading up to this year’s 9/11 anniversary, there were two bombings on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and increasing threats to and attacks on the Libyan nationals hired to provide security at the U.S. missions in Tripoli and Benghazi.Details on these alleged incidents stem in part from the testimony of a handful of whistleblowers who approached the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the days and weeks following the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The incidents are disclosed in a letter to be sent Tuesday to Hillary Clinton from Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the oversight committee’s subcommittee that deals with national security.The State Department did not offer comment on the record last night.The new information disclosed in the letter obtained by The Daily Beast strongly suggests the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the late Ambassador Chris Stevens were known by U.S. security personnel to be targets for terrorists. Indeed, the terrorists made their threats openly on Facebook.For example, following a May 22 early-morning attack on a facility that housed the International Committee on the Red Cross, a Facebook page claimed responsibility, and said the attack was a warning and a “message for the Americans disturbing the skies over Derna.” That reference was likely to American surveillance drones over a city that provided fighters to al Qaeda in Iraq in the last decade.Keep reading…

…Susan Rice and the Obama adminstration is very worried about losing Jewish voters in 2012, if the Palestinians are recognized by the United Nations.

Yet, in a video you see that Susan Rice is worried about something else; losing Congress’ financial and political support of the United Nations; an idea first put forth by John Boltonand since supported by a number of different individuals in Congress. Here is the important quote: And this would be exceedingly politically damaging in our domestic context, as you can well imagine. And I cannot frankly think of a greater threat to our ability to maintain financial and political support for the United Nations in congress than such an outcome.The video was censored; the quote appears around the 6:30 mark.